Would this amulet be unbalanced?

[Senko]

I was looking over some of my favorite items from various DnD/Pathfinder games and I was reminded of the amulet of power from Baldurs gate . . .

The Amulet of Power is a magical silver amulet in Siege of Dragonspear, Shadows of Amn, Throne of Bhaal and The Black Pits I and II.

It provides the wearer the beneficial status effect of Vocalize, along with a stackable 5% bonus to magical resistance and a stackable casting time reduction of 1. It also grants an immunity to Level drain, which is very handy while fighting vampires.

I'm thinking even if you adapted this and included it in a pathfinder game it would not be balanced giving effectively the silent spell feat, +5% SR, Maybe quicken spell metamagic (depending on how you interpret the old casting time rules) and most importantly immunity to level drain. As far as I can tell there isn't a way outside specific races/classes to have immunity to level drain so I'm thinking this wouldn't be balanced but I'm hoping I'm wrong as ohterwise it'd be a nice major magic item (silent spell, 5% SR stackable with other sources and immunity to level drain). You could also I suppose adapt the rods and have the silent and/or quicken metmagics usable X times a day.

[VoodistMonk]

I would either completely nix the casting time reduction, or have multiple versions of the amulet that are tied to different metamagic rods... with uses per day.

Kobolds can get 1/day Silent Spell, and Oracle's get it with the Deaf Curse. I don't really think that it's especially powerful on its own, but in combination with possibly another "free" Quicken metamagic effect... I think this should just be a lesser, completely separate, amulet from the Quicken one.

Maybe one is silver, plated with platinum... it has Silent Spell, some SR, and a bonus to saves against death effects... or whatever.

The other one is platinum, plated with silver... it has Quicken Spell, some SR, and immunity to energy drain.

Maybe the lesser version has something like the Changeling Mist Child feature, or whatever it is called that increases miss chance by 5%... instead of Spell Resistance.

This amulet does sound like it is specifically meant to save your @$$ when you find yourself wearing nothing but a ball-gag, grappling a Succubus. Lol.

[Smallfoot]

Senko wrote:

....it'd be a nice major magic item (silent spell, 5% SR stackable with other sources and immunity to level drain). You could also I suppose adapt the rods and have the silent and/or quicken metmagics usable X times a day.

The usual question is "what is this worth?" Answer that and you can generally determine what level it should be available at in order to be roughly in balance with existing magic items. Unfortunately I don't have the custom item rules at hand so I'll leave that for someone else.

Silent spell doesn't remotely threaten to break the game, so an item that makes it available on demand is no big deal. Even cutting it back to 1/day or 3/day won't make it much less useful, since it's pretty rare that you need it.

I don't know the mechanics of magical resistance in D&D, so it's hard to say how to adapt it to Pathfinder. (Spell resistance is given as a target number in PF1ed. Any caster attempting to cast a spell against that target rolls a d20 and adds their caster level. Elf casters get a +2, the Spell Penetration feat gives +2, there are some other bonuses available.) Spell Resistance of 12 is only enough to give a 50/50 chance of resisting a first level caster. If this item gives an SR bonus in the 1-5 range, it's pretty harmless on its own. It stacks up nicely with the SR spell. I wouldn't be too concerned about it.

Edit: Forgot about the level drain. That's a big benefit of the 4th level spell Death Ward, a minute/level spell. So do you make this feature into something that has to be activated, with a specific short duration, or an always-on benefit with some other limit, like one negative level/day, or a fixed number of levels for the lifetime of the amulet? Either way could work.

Quicken Spell - whoa, that's a big one. It basically means casting twice in one round, and I shouldn't have to tell you how powerful that can be. On the other hand, it bumps the spell up *4* levels, so first your caster has to have 5th level spell slots at minimum (ignoring Quickened cantrips). Even at once per day, most casters would loooove to get hold of the item.

[Senko]

I gave a bit of thought to this while on the phone to tech support and my current inclination is to make it essentially 2 rods in effect. So you would have 3 uses per day of silent and quicken spell (probably with variant amulets for the 3 types of rod) and you can only apply 1 or the other metamagic to any given spell. Basically you have 1 item for 2 metamagics but actual benefit over 2 rods is minimal. Its why I'm less than concerned about quicken if I go with the rod mechanics its not doing anything you can't get elsewhere already.

As for the level drain its why I loved the amulet in Baldurs gate (Hit me vampires you can't kill me) but as you said the only option is minute a level death ward. Hmmm maybe I could use mythic rules?

Amulet of power
1) Functions as a rod of metamagic Quicken and Metamagic Silent spell (usual rod rules and variants.
2) +5 SR stackable with other sources.
3) If wearer is Mythic confers immunity to negative energy and level drain from non-mythic sources/enemies?

That seems mangeable giving 2 rods in exhange for a used item slot and a small boost to SR. Mythic character can reduce the annoyance/threat of negative energy/level drain but it still remains a DM option to use against them.

I will also give context in that I've been playing Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous and they have a LOT of stat/level draining enemies so far which reminded me of this amulet and got me to look over my lists of favorite items to see if I remembered right and what it was.

[VoodistMonk]

Whether or not the amulet is truly balanced will come down to how it is crafted, which materials are used, and where the mass is distributed.

[Senko]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Whether or not the amulet is truly balanced will come down to how it is crafted, which materials are used, and where the mass is distributed.

Toupe.

[OmniMage]

I would break up the magic into their individual effects, modernize them to pathfinder 1E rules, and then figure out their prices. Once that is done, its simple to put them together.

From the sounds of it, you already determined that the magic item provides effects similar to metamagic rods (silent and quicken), spell resistance, and resistance to negative levels.

Deathward is a spell that protects you from negative energy and allows you to ignore the effects of negative levels. It also protects you from death spells and death effects. The +4 morale should be removed according to the rules, but I'm not sure how to add it back in (the bonus doesn't affect all saves, so its price should get a discount).

4 (spell level) * 9 (caster level) * 2000 gp (continuous effect) * 2 (1 min/level) = 144000 gp.

At this price range, the magic item is going to be for high level characters, if not an artifact.

A SR of 30 is going to be 180000 gp. To scale it back to 140000 gp, it'd be SR 26.

A metamagic rod silent can range from 3000 gp (lesser) to 24500 gp (greater).

A metamagic rod quicken can range from 35000 gp (lesser) to 170000 gp (greater).

At this point, its looking to be too expensive to be anything but an artifact. Might as well let it keep the +4 morale bonus vs negative energy and death effects. I would boot the metamagic silent effect as it feels a little out of place.

The full price should be: 170000 gp (metamagic) + 216000 gp (Deathward * 1.5) + 210000 gp (spell resistance * 1.5) = 596000 gp (nearly the expected wealth of a level 20 character).

[VoodistMonk]

What about that scarab that absorbs a certain number of death effects? Maybe use something like that?

Or any of the several Ioun Stones that either absorb spells or protect against certain things?

[Senko]

OmniMage wrote:

I would break up the magic into their individual effects, modernize them to pathfinder 1E rules, and then figure out their prices. Once that is done, its simple to put them together.

From the sounds of it, you already determined that the magic item provides effects similar to metamagic rods (silent and quicken), spell resistance, and resistance to negative levels.

Deathward is a spell that protects you from negative energy and allows you to ignore the effects of negative levels. It also protects you from death spells and death effects. The +4 morale should be removed according to the rules, but I'm not sure how to add it back in (the bonus doesn't affect all saves, so its price should get a discount).

4 (spell level) * 9 (caster level) * 2000 gp (continuous effect) * 2 (1 min/level) = 144000 gp.

At this price range, the magic item is going to be for high level characters, if not an artifact.

A SR of 30 is going to be 180000 gp. To scale it back to 140000 gp, it'd be SR 26.

A metamagic rod silent can range from 3000 gp (lesser) to 24500 gp (greater) to 234,000 (greater).

A metamagic rod quicken can range from 35000 gp (lesser) to 170000 gp (greater).

At this point, its looking to be too expensive to be anything but an artifact. Might as well let it keep the +4 morale bonus vs negative energy and death effects. I would boot the metamagic silent effect as it feels a little out of place.

The full price should be: 170000 gp (metamagic) + 216000 gp (Deathward * 1.5) + 210000 gp (spell resistance * 1.5) = 596000 gp (nearly the expected wealth of a level 20 character).

Given that the anti-level drain is mythic only you can probably ignore that for pricing and even mention in most games and for mythic your looking at other issues.

The SR I think going by your calculations would only be 40,000 gold since its SR +5 not SR 30 (seems more appropriate to the originals +5% and even fairly strong compared given the different values in 3rd ed).

That's give us a price range of . . .

Non Mythic: 78,000 (lesser and probably due discounts for multiple effects) to 234,500 (Greater again with possible discounts).

Mythic: As above but add another 144,000

So perhaps a lesser amulet of power (78kish SR and 2 lesser metamagic rods) a regular amulet for high level characters (? price 2 normal metamagic rods + SR) and an artifact/mythic one that functions as 2 greater metamagics, SR and anti-level drain.

VoodistMonk wrote:

What about that scarab that absorbs a certain number of death effects? Maybe use something like that?

Or any of the several Ioun Stones that either absorb spells or protect against certain things?

I don't know why but I ALWAYS forget to look at those when checking to see if there's an existing item. I'll do that.

Edit
Interesting the scarab gives SR and while it only stops 12 attacks its slotless for a mere 19k so maybe anti-level drain isn't that expensive an option afterall?

[OmniMage]

Well, I wasn't using your design. I was designing a magic item as I would make it. No +5 to SR, no mythic, just what I thought would make sense for a pathfinder game.

Also, I'm not really sure how to do the +5 to SR anyways. I mean most player races don't come with SR, and when they have multiple SR effects, only the strongest applies.

[OmniMage]

I might as well stat out my version.

The amulet of power is a minor artifact that has the power to give the wearer resistance to death and negative energy, protection from magic, and to quicken the wearer's magic. The wearer is protected from death effects and negative energy as though they were under the effects of a death ward spell. It gives the wearer SR 31. It also allows the wearer to quicken spells as though they were using a greater metamagic rod quicken (3 charges per day).

I'm not really sure how to handle its construction. I'm kinda thinking it could overload or something.